›› This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.
You endured Aurora’s frozen wasteland of a winter. You lived through yet another series of false springs that give way to sudden insufferable heat. You researched. You mulched. You even read the directions.
Tomato time.
Backyard gardening is tough. By the time summer really gets rolling, like now, all the fun in tending to your most precious crop has evaporated like last night’s dew.
While attention to detail when you were planting was the most important part of slicing the best tomato you ever tasted this summer, the heavy lifting of your Early Girls isn’t done.
Tomatoes are both a sturdy, reliable garden staple, and a temperamental femme fatale that can quickly leave you empty-handed.
Most of the downside of tomato gardening has to do with where you live. While insects aren’t as much a problem as they are at lower, wetter elevations, the dry heat, wicked monsoons and marginal soils can rob you of victory.
Master gardeners at the Colorado State University Extension Service offer these tips to seeing red in the garden.
- Mulch. This is serious and not optional in backyard gardens. Spreading a couple of inches of shredded plastic, grass or other reliable mulch can make the difference between enjoying your vine ripened beauties or having to enjoy someone else’s. Tomato plant roots are tender things. Too much of anything, heat, cold, dry or water can shock the plant. Once that happens, it’s pretty much over. The mulch helps keep the shallowest roots cool during Aurora’s blazingly hot afternoons. It helps retain moisture surrounding roots, and it can help keep weeds from growing into the plant.
- Water. For July and most of August, slow, deep, regular watering is vital to keeping the plant healthy and creating the fruit you’re dying for. If you let your plants get too dry, the leaves will drop, and the fruit will quit growing. If you water your plants too much or too frequently, they’ll produce far more green than fruit, be susceptible to endless diseases, or simply peter out from the lack of a healthy root environment. For an average, indeterminate, hybrid tomato plant starting to bear heavily, about a gallon of water a day is a place to start. Because soil conditions and endless other factors affect water needs, the best way to judge this is to stick your finger in the ground near the plant in the heat of the afternoon, and watch the plant closely. If at 4 p.m. after an early morning watering the dirt is bone dry, water more or more frequently. If it’s wet, you’re watering too much. It should be slightly cool and damp.
- Watch the plant. It’s OK for a tomato to look a little droopy on a blazing hot July afternoon. But if the branches are beginning to sag, the plant is too hot. Mulch helps. Extra water helps. A thin shade screen is best for sensitive heirlooms. This may seem like a colossal pain, but getting this far only to be looking on Craigslist for someone else’s successful tomato crop is much less fun. Finally, water in the morning, not after dark, especially if you’re sprinkling water over the plant. Wet plants during the cool night is a recipe for bug and disease problems. Water the soil, not the leaves.
- Fertilize grown plants very lightly, and not with a heavy nitrogen mix. Heavily composted organics are all that’s needed. Fertilizing heavily produces large plants with little or diminished fruit.
- Watch for pests. Keeping plants dry helps reduce most infestations, but tomatoes taste good to more than humans. Watch for spots on leaves, yellowing, curling or white dusty-looking substances. Identifying the culprit can be tricky. Most large garden centers offer expert help. Pluck a couple of suspicious leaves and take them in for identification. Environment-friendly vegetable “soaps” are actually pretty effective at chasing off most garden variety bugs. But not all. The decision to bring in the big, toxic guns is individual. It’s hearbreaking to reel in the best tomato crop ever only to see it devoured by armies of hungry insects. The most common problems are caused by viruses that live in the soil and infect plants: Fusarium and Verticillium. They cause different kind of leaf spots and wilts, sometimes infecting and ruining the fruit. For the most part, it’s all over if a plant succumbs. I know this is hard, but the faster you get it out of your garden, the better. The virus is often spread by small thrips that thrive on Colorado weeds. Keep the weeds out of the garden and you improve your chances of getting by this deal breaker.
- Finally, pick fruit when it turns the right color, not when the tomato is absolutely ripe. Heirlooms tend to get a little mealy when left on the vine, and ripening fruit is a magnet for pests and problems. Keep dropped, spoiled or overripe fruit off the ground and away from leaves. As the season winds down, top the plants to encourage fruit production, not plant growth.
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And the most important part? If you’re successful in bringing in that bumper crop of tomatoes so good they need only be eaten like an apple, share with those who weren’t so lucky. Next time, that could be you.